That Sinking Feeling

By Mark Thompson/Washington

At the Quonset Point, R.I., shipyard last week, riggers and welders were busy bending steel into the first pieces of a new class of nuclear attack submarines. When launched in 2004, the U.S.S. Virginia will be the first of a fearsome nuclear family, 30 vessels bristling with 38 weapons apiece. Designed to prowl the world's shallow coastal waters, where the Navy believes future conflicts could erupt, Virginia-class subs will whisper above the ocean floor, making only 10% of the noise of today's already library-quiet submarines.

Each 377-ft. sub will feature highly sophisticated wake suppressors and pollution controls to mask its presence. A videocam system will replace the traditional optical periscope, making for more acute reconnaissance at night and in bad weather. Each vessel will have its own on-board computer network, packing more cyber-power into its 7,700 tons than the 65 attack subs that came before it put together. Eventually, the Navy plans to outfit the subs with "antitorpedo" torpedoes, which the Navy has fantasized about for decades.

The new class of warship is more than a maritime mirage: this week President Clinton will unveil a defense budget for next year that includes a cool $1 billion for the vessels, as well as a recommendation to speed up their production. The fleet is ultimately expected to cost $63.7 billion and serve as the leading edge of a 50-attack-sub armada that the Navy wants for the 21st century. (A separate class of 18 strategic submarines, which serve as platforms for intercontinental ballistic missiles, will be downsized to 14.) But there is a growing sense that these new subs, designed to hunt other ships and launch land and sea attacks, may be preparing for a war that will never come.

While supertech subs were once an integral part of a cold war blueprint that included deadly superpower showdowns on the high seas, few planners can describe a credible scenario in which that kind of naval engagement would now take place. For all their gritty romantic lore, the days of battleships and cruisers slugging it out as submarines stealthily lurked below the surface have gone the way of Admiral Chester Nimitz. But many in the American submarine community continue to believe--or at least to argue--that a massive undersea force is still an essential part of American security.

The Navy cites the prowess and power of the Russian submarine fleet as its key challenge. Moscow, despite its economic woes, is building three new classes of submarines that will challenge the U.S.'s best, say Navy intelligence reports. Other accounts from Russia, though, paint a far bleaker picture. Senator Richard Lugar recently visited Sevmash, Russia's premier submarine yard, and found workers destroying--not building--submarines. "There isn't the money to modernize," says the Indiana Republican, an expert on the Russian military. "There isn't the money for an armed force."

Indeed, Russian submariners have been gratefully taking delivery of tons of potatoes, cabbages, carrots and beets from Russian towns that have "adopted" submarines. The local utility has periodically shut off electric power because the Sevmash yard hasn't paid its bills. Its restless, unpaid workers have been threatening to strike. As dozens of Russian submarines rust in port, production of new ones has ground to a halt.

Perhaps that is why the U.S. Navy is increasingly shifting its warnings to the threat posed by some two dozen other nations--from China to Iran--operating more than 100 diesel-electric subs. Vessels of this type are quiet underwater, but their need to recharge their batteries forces them to surface every day or so, when they become sitting ducks. Nonetheless, Navy planners repeatedly cite the possibility that Iran's three Russian-made Kilo subs could bottle up the mouth of the Persian Gulf in a time of crisis, picking off thin-skinned oil tankers like marksmen at a state fair. But few believe that even this scary scenario would be much more than a 48-hour headache for the Pentagon.

Boosters insist that much of the U.S. sub fleet's new post-cold war mission isn't about blowing things up. It is about protecting American power around the world without firing a shot, by visiting foreign ports along with other warships, implicitly flexing martial muscle. "The United States," says the Navy's official sub statement, "maintains a capabilities-based, multimission submarine force that is sized to satisfy peacetime requirements and is not sized to counter any country's threat."

Privately, some Navy officials acknowledge that the military rationale for 50 attack submarines is dubious. After all, the Navy now assigns two attack subs to each deployed aircraft carrier, something it usually didn't do even during the most tension-fraught days of the cold war. "It's a dirty little secret," a Navy commander daringly argued in Proceedings, an independent Navy journal. "U.S. nuclear-powered attack submarines no more support the carrier battle group commander than wet roads support traffic safety."

There are, of course, some missions subs can best perform: hunting other subs, for example, or surveillance, or launching surprise missile and commando attacks. The problem is that many of their other supposed missions, including Tomahawk barrages and naval blockades, can be handled more efficiently by surface ships.

In a world in which force projection may be as much about visibility as about lethal power, the subs' stealth can be seen as a liability. Submarine advocates praise this "presence through uncertainty," likening the boats to monsters in the dark, terrifying even if they're not really there. But such stealthiness poses a tactical quandary. It requires absolute radio silence, whereas in today's U.S. military all key forces are bound together by waves of always-flowing electronic data. A U.S. submarine plugged into such "network-centric" warfare would forfeit some of its vital silence, potentially betraying its position to the enemy.

The murky mission for today's sub fleet has affected morale on board the nation's fleet of 65 attack subs, which is slated to be reduced to 50 in 2003. Young officers who dreamed of chasing Soviet subs around the globe can't figure out what they are supposed to do. "A concise submarine-force mission statement would help junior officers understand why they are at sea," a Navy lieutenant writes in Proceedings. "Without a mission statement, there is no sense of direction for the submarine force." And the Navy is having difficulty manning (no women serve aboard U.S. submarines) even its shrinking fleet. Since July the Navy has been offering unprecedented $45,000 re-enlistment bonuses to nuclear-trained sailors to entice their continued underwater service.

Given the dearth of threats, some experts see no need for a 50-sub fleet. Ivan Eland of the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank, argues that a force of 25 is more than adequate. If the Navy kept its current submarines steaming for their planned 30-year lives and bought no new ones, the U.S. sub fleet would still not fall to 25 until 2017. That's not how they see things at the Pentagon, however. Its Defense Science Board recently urged the Navy to begin planning the next-next-generation attack submarine--one that will be better and bigger than the U.S.S. Virginia. America's attack-submarine force is "a unique 'crown jewel' for the United States," said the board. Unmentioned was the fact that the real crown jewels, those of the British monarchy, have been retired to a museum.